Trump’s transition team aims to kill Biden EV tax credit in US: Report
Al Jazeera
Ending the tax credit would gravely affect EV transition in the US even as it would help Tesla beat competitors.
US President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is planning to kill a $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric-vehicle purchases as part of broader tax-reform legislation, Reuters news agency has reported, citing two sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
Ending the tax credit could have grave implications for an already stalling electric vehicle (EV) transition in the United States. And yet representatives of Tesla – by far the nation’s largest EV seller – have told a Trump transition committee that they support ending the subsidy, said the two sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, one of Trump’s biggest backers and the world’s richest person, said earlier this year that killing the subsidy might slightly hurt Tesla sales, but would devastate its US EV competitors, which include legacy automakers such as General Motors.
Shares of Tesla fell 5.5 percent to $311.77 in afternoon trading on Thursday.
Repealing the subsidy, which has been a signature measure of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), is being discussed in meetings by an energy-policy transition team led by billionaire oilman Harold Hamm, founder of Continental Resources, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, the two sources said.
